


First Order, Then Chaos

by sternfleck



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (but with the Force), Anal Sex, Boot Worship, Denial of Feelings, Dominant Armitage Hux, Dubious Consent, Holding Hands, Humiliation, Hux is good at his job, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Power Play, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Rimming, Soft Ending, Submissive Kylo Ren, Touch-Starved, Under-negotiated Kink, Workplace Sexual Harassment, canon-typical war crimes, kylo ren is dirty and smells bad, science Hux, very very slight Hux/OFC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:55:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23179588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternfleck/pseuds/sternfleck
Summary: General Hux loves order. Kylo Ren loves General Hux. Unfortunately, he has a chaotic way of showing it.Or: Newly stationed to the Finalizer, Kylo Ren thinks it’s a good idea to play with Hux using the Force, while the General commands the bridge. They both get more than they bargained for.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 13
Kudos: 88





	First Order, Then Chaos

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic, so, hello to the fandom. Coronavirus exile has spurred me to indulge myself by writing Kylux.
> 
> In this fic, Hux is supervising the development of the Starkiller weapon, so there's science stuff involved in the story. I’ve taken creative liberties with scientific concepts, as well as with the Star Wars-verse science around the Force. I also haven’t read any of the SW comics or novels, so, among other things, the timeline for Hux’s career/education arc might be off.
> 
> See end notes for description of dubcon warning.

When the sliding door to the conference room opens with a resounding slam, the petty officer topping off General Hux’s cup of tarine tea startles and recoils. Hux can’t blame her, although it still hurts when the boiling liquid cascades across his forearm, his splashproof datapad, and the reams of printed flimsiplast extracted from the Tarkin Initiative archives.

“Ren,” Hux sneers at the dark figure in the doorway. “Joining us at last.”

“I was training,” says Ren through his vocoder, as he skids across the floor and sprawls into the chair next to the General’s.

Hux wrinkles his nose. “That much is evident.”

Ren stinks, more than usual, a sweaty musk that will grow stale as the meeting wears on. Ren will do what he always does in the General’s meetings: lean back in his chair with his battle-caked boots on the table and make snide, cheeky comments that serve no one. But Kylo Ren is Hux’s co-commander, even if he does nothing but sulk and sweat. Hux isn’t about to exclude him from meetings if there’s even the smallest chance Ren could absorb some of the information that’s essential to the daily running of the _Finalizer_ , and thereby begin to pull his weight in the First Order. 

Hux is also in his element in these meetings. He’s not too proud to admit to himself that he likes to show off. Ren’s hardly a receptive audience, but he’s not part of the Order hierarchy as such, so he has fresh eyes compared to Hux’s officers, who have all grown up in this environment. At times, Hux wishes Ren were more easily impressed by competence. Still, he’s better than no one.

“You have tea all over you.”

With the mask, Hux can never tell if Ren is looking at him, which he supposes is part of the point. The vocoder makes all Ren’s words come out flat and expressionless, destroying any nuance. It doesn’t make it easy to offer Ren a level reply. Too often, Hux finds himself resorting to weak, childish rejoinders. Like now.

“Well-spotted, Ren. Whose fault is that, barging in here like a rancor and intimidating my officers?”

“I made a mess of you, General Hux.”

Hux swallows, glowering. There’s some double entendre here, some license Ren thinks he has the right to take, just because Hux has opened his legs for him a few times. Just because he knows how to get under Hux’s skin.

“I can clean it up,” says Ren in his toneless machine-voice. He raises his hand, and Hux feels a pulling warmth across his sleeve, his arm, his lap. The sheets of old Imperial-era flimsi ruffle as though caught in a breeze.

“No, Ren, there’s no need to —”

Hux falls silent as Ren, with his inexplicable Force, draws the spilled tea into a pulsing ball on the tabletop. It shines like an enormous version of a droplet left after a rainstorm.

“Give me the teapot,” Ren growls at the petty officer, and she sets the steel vessel down on the tabletop with a look on her face that says she’d rather not be here, caught between these two men. With a flick of his wrist, Ren lifts the lid of the pot and plops the ball of liquid back inside. It steams for a second or two, before Ren twitches his fingers. Then the lid of the pot lowers itself once more.

Ren turns his masked face towards Hux. “Fixed,” he says, no doubt expecting praise.

Hux still feels the warmth of the Force grazing over his skin. It was eerie, like a human touch, but broader than any hand. His sleeve and his jodhpurs are perfectly dry after Ren’s efforts, as though they were never wet at all. Even the burn on his forearm is soothed. It won’t hurt for long.

“I’m not drinking that, not now it’s been all over the room.” Hux hears his own petulant words and marvels at Ren’s inexhaustible ability to annoy Hux until he even annoys himself.

“It’s pure now. Every molecule,” says Ren. “More than before. I even reheated it for you.”

This is what the gathered officers around the table hear. But what Hux hears, pressing into his head like a fever, is Ren.

 _You’ve had my cock in your mouth_ , is what Ren says into Hux’s mind. _After I fucked you open with it._

Hux raises his lip in a snarl. He can’t help himself, even though it makes him look unbalanced to lash out at Ren after the Supreme Leader’s apprentice has, for once, done something superficially helpful.

“I didn’t ask for your assistance, Ren. Are you a cleaning droid now as well as a mindless weapon?”

Ren leans back in his chair, crosses his arms. Doesn’t reply. Hux feels Ren’s presence somewhere at the heel of his skull, where Hux’s most basic impulses reside. Then the flickering, searching heat relents, and Ren is gone.

“Shall we continue?” Hux spreads out the sheets of flimsi, pulls up a hologram on his datapad. He sends it to the holoprojector in the centre of the conference table. It’s of a new design sent up last night from engineering. A new weapon for the Order: a planet hollowed out and filled with deadly starlight.

“We are here today as the intellectual heirs of Grand Moff Tarkin, carrying on the spirit of his effort to develop technologies that could destroy entire planets in the name of the Galactic Empire’s goals. As you all know, our task is to surpass the destructive capabilities of both Death Stars, to build a weapon that will bring an end to the Galactic disorder of the New Republic and the vile Resistance.”

The ice-blue hologram rotates gently in the recycled air of the conference room. The Colonel across from Hux watches it with a dreamy yet focused expression on her face.

Hux goes on, sharing the engineering team’s findings, passing around some flimsi sheets with archival information from the Tarkin Initiative’s early efforts to scout materials for the first Death Star. By the end of the meeting, after reports from various officers in charge of personnel, research, weapons tech, and the First Order’s financials, Hux has entirely forgotten the stinking, brooding, black-robed presence at his right side.

“Captain Brandt, you are to assemble a ‘trooper squadron for an exploratory mission to evaluate several kyber-rich planets in the Unknown Regions. Major Kaabo, continue your financial evaluations, and compose a report detailing the most viable funding methods for our undertaking. And Colonel Adasa —” Hux addresses the woman across the table “— you will continue to supervise the engineering sector’s research into the Tarkin Initiative archives. The more information we have from the past, the more effectively we can construct the future the Galaxy requires. This concludes our meeting. You are all dismissed.”

Hux rises, powers off the holoprojector. The engineering team’s diagrams disappear from the air. Hux shuffles the flimsi sheets back into order and slides them across the table for Colonel Adasa, who will take them back with her to the archives. Adasa gives Hux a nearly imperceptible smile as she takes the stack.

“Nice work with the tea, earlier, sir,” she says with a nod to Ren, and then she turns and exits with the rest of the officers, leaving Hux alone with the Supreme Leader’s incorrigible apprentice.

Ren still has his feet up, his boots against the edge of the table. In spite of all Ren’s stated loyalty to the Order and to the Dark, his every gesture makes it blindingly obvious that he was raised in the New Republic. Hux thinks of telling him so, but decides against it. Instead, he turns to leave.

“You like order, General,” says Ren then. Of course he won’t let Hux out of here without dragging him into another time-wasting, infuriating conversation. “I put things back in order for you.”

“After you disturbed them.”

“It’s not my problem if your officers can’t handle a shock. You should reconsider your training methods.”

There’s subtext here, a pathetic game of tell-me-I’m-good-please, with Ren’s eternal “or else” implicit in everything he says or does. If this is flirting — and Hux is fairly sure the tea performance was Ren’s idea of courtship — Hux doesn’t have time for it. He’s let Ren come in his arse twice, and once across his back. What more does the man want?

“At least my officers’ training doesn’t make them late for meetings,” says Hux, falling into Ren’s argument with the same unwise rush that makes him fall into Ren’s bed, and hating himself for it.

“You don’t need me at your meetings, Hux. I’m a Force user. Weapons engineering means nothing to me. You invite me so I can watch you.”

“You have a painfully high opinion of yourself, Ren, if you think I include you in meetings or briefings for any reason other than that you are, to my endless misfortune, the co-commander of this ship.” 

“I read minds, General. You like to perform. Acting like a genius for your officers. You don’t have the power of the Force, so you try to fill the void inside you with your science.”

“My science is going to win the war, overcome the Republic, snuff out the Resistance, and install the First Order as the sole power over the Galaxy.”

Ren continues as though Hux hasn’t spoken at all. “You’re always pushing yourself. Always tense. Tight. Nothing’s ever perfect like you want it to be. You’re not enough. Your control is incomplete. You’re...overcompensating.”

It’s not Ren’s puerile (and inaccurate) words that tip Hux into all-out rage, but Ren’s gesture, the flick of a gloved finger where Ren’s hands are spread on the arms of his chair. Hux feels the lick of warmth across his sac, the phantom pressure that lifts his soft cock for the briefest second before dropping it again. Hux gasps through his bared teeth.

The nerve of Ren, to touch Hux _there_ with his sinister, weird, archaic magic. The mind-reading is bad enough, but Hux is used to it. This...this is new, and it doesn’t bode well. Hux has no words to express his wrath. 

Livid, Hux turns on his heel and, with uncharacteristic pettiness, uses all his strength to slam the conference room’s sliding door shut behind him.

\- - - -

Lately, Hux spends hours of each rest shift immersed in Imperial-era textbooks and papers on his datapad. The Tarkin Initiative’s documents are opaque, written in scientific jargon that Hux is only slowly learning how to parse. He’s been in this routine for months — General by day and engineering student by night. There are, of course, hundreds of trained engineers under his command, but Hux has always felt the need to understand the orders he gives to his subordinates, and for the most ambitious project of his career, Hux can hardly leave the details up to everyone else.

What’s more, the work relaxes him. He feels closer to the men and women of the Empire, who went to such lengths to try to put the Galaxy into order. They failed, but to have the privilege of carrying on their efforts is a reward in itself. Someday, someone after Hux will do the same for him. He intends to offer his successor a far easier road.

Distractions keep flickering into Hux’s head as he sips his tarine tea. If he didn’t know better, he’d say it was Kylo Ren invading his mind again, but there’s none of the heat that marks Ren’s presence, none of the creeping strangeness across Hux’s skin.

In truth, the distractions are an intrinsic element of the work itself. The Tarkin Initiative records spend a lot of time discussing states of matter. There were fusion reactors at the core of both Death Stars, which smashed atoms together in a reaction facilitated by hypermatter gathered in the remnants of the Redhurne supernova. Hux didn’t understand this at first, and had to consult his textbooks, at which point he found himself learning the entire physical history of the universe. Physics works that way. One piece connects to another, and before Hux knows it, he’s seeing connections between the tea steaming on his desk and the atoms born in the core of the first stars in the Galaxy.

In his studies, Hux has learned about order and chaos. The textbooks tell him that the universe was orderly at the start, but the arrow of time only points forward, into chaos. There’s no law in the universe that allows for the perfect reversal of an act of entropy. A broken vessel cannot be perfectly repaired. A spill can’t be cleaned up without a trace. Bodies age, empires fall, stars die in plumes of their own fire. The universe, and the galaxies in it, tumble onward into ever-increasing disorder. Only deliberate action — “the application of energy to a system,” as the textbook says — can restore any order to a reality that’s always trying to unbalance itself.

Hux applies all his energy to every system he creates, day after day, all for the sake of order. On these late nights, he faces the mathematical laws that tell him his work will never be enough to win his war against chaos.

If only it were possible. If only it were easy.

Hux remembers Ren’s words in the conference room, after he’d cleaned up the spilled tea. _Pure down to every molecule_ , Ren had said. And he’d cleaned it up as though the spill, the chaos, the error never happened. Hux would need to see test data before he’ll believe a Force user can purify tea, or anything else, at a molecular level. But what if it were true? Ren would be a prodigy, then. A walking, talking, annoying violation of the laws of nature. 

It’s unfair, Hux finds himself thinking, that Ren of all people should be the one who can break these natural laws. Hux felt his own clothes cleared of all dampness after Ren swept his magic over them. He can’t deny that. Why _Kylo Ren?_ Why is the most chaotic person Hux has ever been forced to spend his days with also the person endowed with the power to put things back into order at nature’s most fundamental levels? 

Hux imagines Ren, asleep in his own quarters on the other side of a half-dozen durasteel bulkheads. In the image in Hux’s mind, Ren is wearing his mask, though Hux knows from their trysts that Ren takes the mask off when he sleeps.

Hux sighs. Kylo Ren, the personification of chaos himself, a man so unstable that even his lightsaber requires design modifications to keep it from exploding upon ignition. And yet, what had Ren said in the conference room, practically begging for Hux’s praise in his flattened mechanical voice? _“I put things back in order for you.”_

In spite of the strong tea, Hux is tired. He closes the textbook file on his datapad, moves to his bed, and, like the Kylo Ren in his imagination, Hux drifts into a deep, anonymous sleep.

He dreams of time in reverse — the universe shrinking to a lone bright point that contains all things. All matter in existence flowing against the inevitable, countermanding the laws of entropy. Putting itself back into order. 

  
\- - - -

  
On the bridge the next day, Hux is providing remote direction to the officers of a nearby First Order ship in their offensive against a faction of Rebel-backed pilots fighting for their planet’s independence. It’s a small world, of little strategic consequence to the Order, but its resources are not insignificant. Hux, not for the first time, finds himself wishing there were more ways to clear these troublesome planets of their inhabitants without disturbing the assets underneath. Perhaps his new engineering studies will give him some ideas.

As he bends over a console to transmit a live battle map to the other Order ship, Hux senses a presence behind him. There’s a sensation like a warm palm across the back of his neck. Ren.

Hux glances over his shoulder, already sneering. Ren’s in that accursed mask, of course, like it affords him power to be faceless and inscrutable.

“General Hux,” Ren says, just to say it. As if he would be here to irritate anyone else.

Hux doesn’t reply. He’s in the middle of assisting in a battle. Whatever a needy, childlike Force user could want from him, it can wait. He turns back to his crew.

“Colonel, wire them our terrain assessments. Run their prospective strike data through our ballistics algorithm and adjust their targeting defaults.”

Colonel Adasa leans over the console in front of her and gets to work. Ren hangs back from the action, watching Hux and the other officers from the edge of the bridge like a filthy spirit who can’t enter unless he’s invited in.

Lieutenant Varda has a report from the other Order ship, and he briefs Hux on the state of the battle while Adasa puts the finishing touches on the _Finalizer_ ’s battle assistance package. When that data goes out to the crew of the _Interamnia_ , they should have no trouble vanquishing the rebels and securing the planet. 

Colonel Adasa has his respect, Hux decides, as he watches her complete her assigned tasks with efficiency. Her serious demeanour and quick strategic mind remind Hux of his mentor Grand Admiral Sloane, though Adasa’s skin is darker and her hair much lighter, almost golden where it falls in short fluffy curls from under her command cap. Hux is fortunate to have officers who know their work and take pride in it. If only he could say the same for his co-commander.

Hux’s thoughts are interrupted by a familiar feeling on the side of his throat. At least, it’s familiar in the sense that he’s felt it before. In every other respect, especially in the context of his present location on the _Finalizer_ ’s bridge, it’s among the strangest sensations Hux has ever felt in his life. 

It’s a distinct impression of a warm, slightly damp, open-mouthed kiss.

Hux slaps his neck as though dispatching a troublesome insect, and the feeling of the phantom kiss disappears.

Adasa finishes assembling the preferred strike data based on the _Finalizer_ ’s terrain readings, and Hux turns to his own console to check her numbers for the targeting strategy. It won’t do to waste the _Interamnia_ ’s scarce ammunition on an unnecessary strike, and more eyes on the numbers always help to prevent errors. It’s part of Order protocol. No work goes unreviewed. 

But as Hux bends at the waist to manipulate the console’s touch screen, there's another phantom touch, warm and insistent, this time against the inside of his thigh. Like strong fingers stroking him there.

Of course. Ren.

Hux won’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. He knows what Ren wants. It’s what Ren always wants — attention. Ren doesn’t care if Hux is kissing him or kicking him, praising or insulting him. He just wants to remember he exists under that mask of his. He wants Hux to remind him. For some reason, he’s chosen _Hux_ , of all people, for this duty. Perhaps, Hux thinks with a sneer, Ren’s choice has something to do with the mysteries of the Force.

Hux’s sneer vanishes as Ren’s touch moves to his chest. Somehow, he can feel Ren’s fingers as though they’re really on his skin, under his greatcoat, his tunic, his blasterproof vest. Ren’s touch skates hot and rough over his ribs, higher, brushing Hux’s nipples until Hux has to clench his lip between his teeth to keep from making a sound.

Then the phantom hands — Ren’s hands — pinch down, gently rolling Hux’s nipples so their sensitive tips brush against the inside of his undershirt. Hux quickly turns a moan into a derisive snort. He glances down the bridge at the crew. No one has noticed.

Hux knows what he has to do to end this. If he takes Ren into his office and shows the man some discipline, he’ll get a few days without Ren making a nuisance of himself. It’s what has worked before, when Ren has smashed droids and consoles during his tantrums, or picked fights with Hux in which he scoured through Hux’s mind to dredge up all his worst memories. Ren, for all his big words about training and power, isn’t a leader. He requires a firm hand, and there have been times when Hux has actually enjoyed delivering what he needs.

Hux has only to give him the order, and Ren will be at his feet, eyes dark, lips open.

But these unsettling touches on Hux’s skin, they feel _good_. For a moment, Hux wonders if Ren is manipulating the pleasure centres of his brain, if that’s possible with the Force, but a scan of his own mind reveals no foreign presence in Hux’s head. It’s his own desire driving him wild, his own oversensitive nerve endings firing pleasure through his untouched skin. Hux wants more of Ren’s touch, in spite of his better judgment. He needs this. It’s worth the weirdness of the whole situation, even worth the shame that burns in him at his own willingness to allow it.

No one has touched Hux like this before — even when he’s been with Ren, their contact has felt more like combat than an act of affection. This, though, this is gentle, worshipful. It’s obviously brazen of Ren to tease Hux on the bridge in front of his crew, but Ren’s touches are hesitant, almost shy. Hux feels irrationally secure, protected by the distance separating their bodies, by the mask that hides Ren’s face. Or maybe it’s not irrational — Hux is in his element on the ship’s bridge, after all. Ren ought to service him here, in his domain.

It’s more erotic, too, that Hux can’t react without humiliating himself. It’s more challenging this way, and even in matters of sex, Hux craves a challenge.

No one’s looking at Hux. The crew are absorbed in their work. Ren’s hot grip moves down to Hux’s waist, a sensation like two hands encircling his narrow body. Fingertips, wide and slow, tenderly stroking the hollows of Hux’s hips. Hux wants to push against Ren’s hands, into that gentleness, so that he won’t stop. But there’s nothing to push into. No hands there.

Then, for the second time, there’s that feeling exactly like a wet kiss, but this time Ren has pressed his disembodied lips to Hux’s lower belly, to the neat faint trail of golden hair that leads downwards. Downwards to where Hux is stunningly, dizzyingly hard, leaking pre-come into his regulation briefs. He stands closer to the console to hide his arousal. If Ren uses the Force to touch him there, Hux will come, and he’ll have to spend the rest of his bridge shift sticky and cold, ashamed of what he’s allowed Ren to do to him.

He flings the thought out like a lash. _If you touch me there, you won’t get what you want._

 _What if I want this?_ Ren’s in his head, of course, as predictable as an echo. _You, General. Undone for me. You’re shaking._

_I’m shaking with rage, Ren. You’d be angry too if a deranged sorcerer from an ancient cult decided to use you as his plaything._

Ren’s snort is audible behind Hux, metallic and low where it’s filtered through the vocoder. _It’s a foolish choice to lie to me when I can read your mind._

_What will you do, Ren, punish me? Oh, but that’s right. Punishment is your fixation, not mine._

Ren’s answer, if there is one, is drowned out by Colonel Adasa, turning from her console to speak to Hux.

“Sir, we have confirmation of a strike from the _Interamnia_ upon planetary target four, with charges loading to fire upon targets three, eight, and nine.” 

“Good. We will bury them in fire. Teach them to defy the might of the First Order.”

Colonel Adasa’s console lights up with a new alert. She looks it over for a few seconds, then turns back to Hux, her face grave.

“Their ammunition reserves are insufficient to strike all targets, sir. They require reinforcements.”

“From us?” Hux pauses, evaluates. “We can spare a few. Lieutenant Varda, comm Captain Phasma and inform her of the circumstances. Authorise her to offer the _Interamnia_ her squadrons as she deems fit. Major Tuai, have the hangar prepare a shuttle and eight TIE fighters. That should suffice. Colonel Adasa, inform the _Interamnia_ of our plans.” 

As Hux speaks, the same warm pressure lands on the back of his neck as when Ren first arrived on the bridge. Then, on the front of his throat, more kisses, hot and searching. An open mouth pressed to the thin skin above Hux’s collar. A flicker of teeth. It’s all Hux can do to keep his voice level.

Hux finishes addressing the crew. Then a hand seems to slide below the back waist of his jodhpurs. Hux freezes, tense everywhere, his breathing ragged. Colonel Adasa is looking at him curiously. Hux’s face burns at the thought of anyone seeing him in this state — he doesn’t even like Ren seeing him lose his self-control in the moments before and after orgasm.

The Force-hand slides lower, stroking one of Hux’s narrow buttocks. Then there’s a torturous, lewd sensation exactly like a kiss against Hux’s tailbone. It happens again, and a third time. Lips on his skin, invisible, wet, searching.

Hux, with horror, understands what’s going to happen a second before it does. Then something that feels exactly like Ren’s open mouth flickers, slick and hot, against the tight edge of Hux’s hole. A tongue slips across the sensitive skin there, curling, pressing into Hux.

Hux gasps. He can’t help it. This is a new level of violation, but it sends heat flaring up his body in a rush, and makes his legs go weak with wanting. He braces himself against the console, his hands clenched.

“Colonel Adasa, you have the bridge.” Hux wills his voice not to tremble.

Then, he wheels around to face his tormentor. “Ren. My office. Now.”

  
\- - - -

  
Hux drags Ren into his office by the front of his pleated tunic.

“Take off that mask.”

He slams his palm into Ren’s chest, forcing Ren back against the durasteel wall. Ren is taller, stronger, but he lets Hux handle him this way, because he’s depraved and uncontrolled and pathetic and all the other names Hux has called him too many times.

Ren presses the release catch on either side of his skull, and the helmet’s mouthguard rises with a hiss. He pulls it off the rest of the way, shakes out his hair, and gazes down at Hux with an imperious pout, his eyelids heavy. Every time Hux sees Ren without his helmet, he has the same thought. _What a waste, to hide such a face behind a mask_. Hux hates the thought, hates thinking it. Hates that Ren can hear it, most of all. 

Hux slams his palm against Ren’s chest, hard. He might as well be punching a wall. Which is something Ren would do.

“Don’t think I don’t recognise the irony in this situation,” Hux hisses, hating that too.

“Irony, General?”

“You’ve given me no choice but to reward you for your bad behaviour.”

“Reward? You led me to expect punishment.” Ren is haughty, and he’s doing something subtle and filthy with his lips that makes Hux want to rut against him, but also throw him out of an airlock into wild space.

“Even punishment is a reward to a degenerate like you.”

“I’m not the one who gets turned on by hiding his hard dick from his soldiers during combat.”

That’s rich of him, to try to make all of this Hux’s fault. The son-of-a-bantha is smirking down at Hux, taking every advantage of their small discrepancy in height. Does the maniac have lifting insoles in those boots of his? Ren looms like disaster everywhere he goes.

“You put the entire operation at risk with your sexual harassment. I’m required on the bridge. I’m essential, and I need to be lucid and focused to do my best work for the Order.”

Ren has the gall to actually roll his kohl-rimmed eyes.

“You’re not as essential as you think. I could have used the Force to find the sites to target. I would do it faster than your weapons algorithms. I could have blown the enemy ships out of the air. Stopped their machinery. Reached inside our enemies’ chests and stopped their hearts.” Ren pulls his gloved hand through the air to illustrate, clenching his thick fingers into a fist.

This...is any of that true? Hux doesn’t care. The grandiose pageantry of it is classic Kylo Ren. Those tactics can’t be strategically feasible, or Leader Snoke would have authorised Ren’s use as a living superweapon, and Hux’s nights of research on Imperial engineering would be replaced by much-needed sleep.

Hux makes himself pause and return to the moment, to catch his breath before his temper overtakes him.

“Well, if your Force is so powerful, why didn’t you do _any of that?_ ” 

Ren tips his head in an awkward jerk that’s likely some sort of shrug. “You didn’t ask. It’s more interesting to use the Force for other acts.”

Other acts, like taking Hux apart where his crew can see his every speck of weakness. Hux is fortunate that none of the ex-Imperial officers were on bridge shift today — his father’s former comrades-in-arms watch Hux’s every move like Parnassian skinwolves circling an encampment. But Ren is more fortunate than Hux, because if Ren’s antics were to put Hux’s authority and reputation on the _Finalizer_ at risk in any real way, Hux would ignore the Supreme Leader’s orders and slip his monomolecular blade across Ren’s pretty throat. 

“Get on your knees.” Hux’s voice, pitiless, fills the soundproofed office.

This sets something off in Ren, as Hux knew it would. The Dark apprentice bends, sinks, and stares up at Hux with hunger plain on his face. His helmet rolls away across the floor. His tongue flicks out to moisten his red lips.

Hux relaxes for the first time since he heard Ren’s modulated voice behind him on the bridge. He reaches for Ren’s hair and twines his fingers into the man’s dark locks. Ren shuts his eyes, leans into Hux’s touch. Did Hux imagine it, or was that a soft moan? Even with the constant high-pitched roar of the ship’s fusion reactors on the levels below, it’s quiet enough in Hux’s office to hear Ren’s desperate whuffing breaths.

Hux raises his hand, yanking Ren’s hair with enough strength that the man’s neck pops audibly. Ren cries out and braces his hands against his thighs. His eyes are wild, needy, harsh, with something else underneath. Something worshipful.

Hux swings the back of his other hand against Ren’s cheek. The hard slap resounds, a dull and shocking sound. Ren’s moan this time is unmistakably erotic. Hux’s body responds to it with a wave of blood to his cock. Kylo Ren on his knees, making sluttish noises for the pain Hux deals out? Hux can concede this is more enjoyable than most other elements of his day to day life.

Hux slaps him again. When he drags Ren up by the hair from where he’s fallen against Hux’s boots, Ren’s mouth is bleeding. Hux’s glove is smeared with spit and blood. He wipes it off in Ren’s hair.

“Disgusting boy,” says Hux through his teeth. Rage is in him like a stim, or maybe it’s not rage but lust, or a darker and less comfortable feeling, something Hux won’t and can’t name.

Ren, for his part, is in no state to reply to Hux’s insult. Blood is dripping from his split lip in a rivulet down his chin, and his eyes are full and wet, as Ren’s eyes often are in situations of high emotion. He looks fetching like this, and Hux has an impulse, for only a second, to bend to Ren’s lips and kiss the blood away.

Instead, Hux leans back against his desk and raises his boot to Ren’s chest. The recessed lights reflect in the polished leather like a cluster of stars. Ren grabs for Hux’s leg with his eyes shut tight, eager and blind, like he wants to rub his face against it.

“No,” Hux pronounces, flexing his leg with the threat of a kick. Ren’s eyes open. A tear rolls down his cheek.

“You’ve taken your pleasure with me far too freely already today,” Hux goes on. “You don’t deserve to touch me. Put your hands on your thighs and keep them there.”

Hux would like to lean here against the durasteel desk and fuck Ren’s throat until his knees buckle and Ren chokes on his spend. Hux can hardly resist the image of Ren’s broken lips gliding wet across the head of his cock, his mouth opening to take Hux inside...but Ren is craving that even more than Hux is, which won’t do. If Hux can’t punish Ren with pain, at least he can deny him the pleasure of tasting Hux the way he wants to.

Instead, Hux drags his boot down the front of Ren’s tunic. He kicks at the wide belt across Ren’s stomach with enough force to draw a gasp.

“Hux,” Ren sighs. He’s pouting now, lips swollen, eyes wide and pleading and mostly free of tears. No title, no “General,” no “sir.” Insolent and intimate all at once. 

“Did it arouse you, Ren, to humiliate me in front of my crew? Does it turn you on to have me at your mercy like some sort of doll?”

Hux isn’t sure why he’s asking this, or what he’ll do if Ren says _yes, Hux, I like using you as my toy, making you do anything I want._ Kill him, possibly.

But Ren doesn’t say that. Instead, he shakes his great head. A few strands of tar-black hair tumble into his eyes. He keeps his hands pressed to his thighs and doesn’t try to remove them. His lip trembles.

“Answer me. Explain yourself.”

Ren speaks hoarsely, his voice unsteady. His teeth are bloody. Hux wonders if Ren likes the taste.

“I could feel your pleasure, Hux. You want to surrender. I want to give you that.”

Hux flares, snarls. “You give me nothing but a headache, you loathsome child.”

“It feels good when I’m in your head. Warm. Like you’re pulling me in. You want this.” Ren’s lips twist when he speaks. He spits the words, accusing, but his eyes are still liquid and wide.

“I want you to obey me. I command this ship. Regardless of Leader Snoke’s orders, I am the authority aboard the _Finalizer_. You will submit.” 

Hux is treading close to sedition, and so is half-surprised when Ren bows his head. Even so, Ren’s face is still set in its natural arrogance, and his gaze still sticks to Hux’s, intense, burning.

“Prostrate yourself to me,” says Hux. “I want you at my feet. Vile creature.”

This is new. Daring. Hux isn’t sure if Ren will protest, and the uncertainty of it makes Hux’s heart speed up. He stretches his fingers inside his gloves, waiting, breathless. Hux _does_ want this. Didn’t realise how much, not until the words were out of his mouth.

Fluidly, Ren lets himself fall forward into a bow. He reaches for Hux’s boots with both hands, letting his forehead rest against Hux’s calves.

In Hux’s head, he hears Ren’s voice, arch, but tense with need. _At your mercy, General._

“Stay out of my head, Ren.” Hux twitches his boot. It catches Ren under the chin, forcing his face up to look at Hux. But instead, Ren bends his neck to press an open kiss to the tip of Hux’s boot. The polished leather fogs with his breath. Hux’s throat tightens.

Oh, Kylo Ren is disgusting. He’s past saving. Hux’s chest is aching, his entire body alive with the harsh thrill of Ren’s submission. Ren’s tongue flickers red across Hux’s boot, tasting it, and it’s such a filthy sight that Hux makes a high, helpless sound halfway between a gasp and a laugh.

Ren isn’t done. He lavishes Hux’s boots with sloppy kisses. Hux imagines he can feel the heat of Ren’s mouth against his instep through the boot leather and thick socks. A fantasy, or another trick of the Force?

Ren moans. He’s enjoying himself too much. Hux hadn’t expected that. A reminder that this is supposed to be a punishment drifts into Hux’s head from a vague place beyond the lust, the thrill, the heat that swirls in his belly when he looks down at Ren and sees the soft line of his jaw, the sweep of his lashes, the lewd dark pink of his lips on Hux’s boot.

Enough. Hux hauls Ren up by his hair, so he’s kneeling again. Ren’s tresses leave a film of sweat on Hux’s glove wherever he touches them. That makes Hux angry, because it’s like Ren is marking him, making a mess of Hux in a way neither of them can control.

“How do you tolerate this?” Hux speaks in a hiss, bending so his face is close to Ren’s. “How can you stand your own filth and chaos, you beast? How do you live with the shame of needing a better man to put you in your place?”

Ren raises his eyes to Hux’s. The blood on his mouth is beginning to clot, but his lips are wet and full, and the look on his face is dangerous. An invitation.

Ren breathes, “I can show you.”

With the Force. Of course. Fuck. The arousal drains from Hux’s body at the thought.

Hux, as a rule, is unadventurous. He doesn’t seek out new experiences, though he’s only thirty years old and could have plenty of fun on shore leave if he liked. Hux finds his thrills in things that make sense. Leadership. Power. Strategy. Achievement. Research.

What Kylo Ren is offering makes no sense. Hux shouldn’t even consider it. It’s a departure from protocol. It’s intimate to the point of foolishness.

In spite of all of this, Hux drops into a crouch, then to his knees, settling across from Ren on the office floor. He sneers at Ren, on principle.

Ren eases his thick glove off one finger at a time. When his hand is bare, he lifts it to Hux’s temple. Trails his fingers down Hux’s sideburn, stroking him.

Unprepared for Ren’s gentleness, Hux shuts his eyes tight. As though he could block out Ren’s touch like the feelings it sparks are nothing but light.

“Give me your hand, Hux.”

Hux removes his own glove, and lays his left hand in Ren’s in what he hopes looks like a regal, heedless gesture. Ren raises their joined hands to his own face.

When Ren presses Hux’s fingers to the soft place at his temple, a circuit completes. There’s a feeling like the click of a lock, and a hot darkness approaching, and then Hux is pulled into another world.

It’s like a battle, or what Hux imagines a battle would be like. This is bloodier and more immersive than even the most realistic training sims. The smell of gore, of death, of burning air. Plasma crackling from blasters and blades. Screams that swell and fall like distant music. Fire, dust, agony, loss, failure, isolation, silence. A lightless room with no one in it. An old, dark voice like steel on steel, making sickening promises: inescapable. A family of enemies, Rebel scum, dragging him forever into their gravity with a pull like an immense, thunderous star. Inescapable. The threat of death, constant and aching. Betrayal from a teacher who’d asked for trust. Dead children, dying children, smoke in the air, darkness, light. The crushing dissonance of being asked to be good. Forced to play a false role — far worse than living in a mask. Hatred. Destiny. Power. The freedom of service to the boundless, hungry Dark. Snapping flashes of sensory data: a console malfunctioning, a droid slashed to pieces, a starfield, a charred corpse, a TIE fighter cockpit, a cup of dark liquid, a smear of blood, a pale hand, snow, a beam of light arcing towards a green planet in the far distance. Other people’s emotions, memories, petty concerns, insistent and too loud to block out. Moods changing faster than the flashing strokes of a lightsaber. Nonsense, breath, overwhelm, chaos. Below it all, a howling whirl of rage and pain and childlike fear. 

Hux has never been a compassionate person. But he’s also never seen anything like that before.

That’s when Ren ejects Hux from his head, like a door slamming shut.

Hux’s skin has gone bloodless and cold. The words are out of Hux’s mouth before he can run them through his mind. “How do you live like this?”

Ren snorts. One eyebrow draws close to the other. His brow creases asymmetrically and twists his handsome face.

“There’s nothing else,” he says.

“I thought you would show me something about sex,” says Hux, hearing the hollow absurdity of his own words. His heart still pounds. He struggles to put his own thoughts in order, to return to himself after entering Ren.

“Sex, General Hux? You were talking about putting me in my place. Is that sex, for you?”

“Don’t play innocent.” Hux’s frustration is returning now, threaded with uncertainty and the strong desire to never again see the inside of Kylo Ren’s head.

“I thought you would like it,” says Ren, his voice as flat as if it came through his vocoder. “You’re curious about me, General. I thought you wanted to know.”

Hux, for once in his life, is at a loss for words. Ren is still holding his hand. Hux thinks of pulling away, knows that Ren must have heard the thought. Keeps his hand in Ren’s.

“This is why I hide inside your mind, General. You offer me relief. Order.”

Ren’s words are too flattering to be serious. Hux suspects he’s being mocked. It doesn’t matter, though. There’s still a cool brief burst of joy high in Hux’s chest at the praise, at the thought of bringing some small order to Kylo Ren’s internal chaos.

“This is why you submit to me? Why you destroy my ship until I have no choice but to service you with pain and discipline?”

“You always had a choice, Hux.” Ren pauses, presses his fingers into Hux’s hand. “You need this as much as I do.”

Hux hates that Ren is right.

Hux rises, stands up. Ren still doesn’t let go of his hand. In this position, Ren kneeling at his feet, it’s easy to remember the man is technically a knight. Hux usually forgets this about Ren, because Supreme Leader Snoke is nothing like the fair maiden a knight ought to pledge himself to. Hux supposes he’s far from that himself, as well.

When Ren’s lips ghost over the back of Hux’s bare hand, Hux is a little ashamed to realise the man has heard all those silly thoughts. But Ren’s not mocking him for them. He’s kissing Hux’s hand like he wants to devour it, like he’d worship Hux, start wars for him. Go to battle for his cause.

Ren in his mind again. _I will pledge. I will serve._

Hux has the impression that Ren is broadcasting these thoughts inadvertently. Like some conduit has opened between them that may never fully close. The fine hairs on his neck elevate at the thought. But Ren’s kisses have moved to Hux’s wrist now, hungry and hot with a flash of teeth across Hux’s tender skin, and Hux is fully hard again, just from that, from these kisses, from Ren.

Hux uses the toe of his boot to flick aside the hem of Ren’s tunic. He drags his boot sole over Ren’s cock, which is hard and consistently impressive in size. Ren’s left a wet patch on his leggings. He’s been aroused for a while, then. Hux isn’t surprised. It’s more remarkable that Ren could hold off from making a mess of himself, since he’s a mess in every other way.

Hux has already decided he won’t fuck Ren’s mouth, though he wants to. Instead, he unzips his jodhpurs and frees his erection. Ren licks his lips at the sight, but Hux shakes his head, and that’s enough to hold Ren back.

Hux pulls off his right glove, one finger at a time, using his teeth. He’s not sure why he’s reluctant to pull his left hand away from Ren’s, and doesn’t interrogate his own motives. Instead, he offers his right hand, holds his palm close to Ren’s lips. 

“Get me wet,” says Hux. “With your mouth. I’m going to come on your face.”

Ren laps at his hand, his slick broad tongue sweeping wide strokes. Hux’s fingers are sensitive, especially where Ren drags his tongue between them, teasing and hungry. Hux’s breath catches in his throat, and a spasm travels through his cock, making it twitch. A bead of pre-come falls from the head of it, down to his office floor.

Ren whines when Hux takes his hand away to wraps the slick heat of it around his own cock. He pulls Hux’s left hand to his cheek, nuzzling it like an animal, until Hux yanks it away and fists his fingers in Ren’s hair once more. Ren gasps, his eyes screwed shut from the pain, lips opening prettily.

It won’t take long for Hux to come, but he wants Ren to break first, out of pride. He pushes his boot against Ren’s groin again, pressing hard enough for it to hurt.

“Please,” Ren chokes. He could be begging for more, or for mercy. Hux doesn’t care. He drags the toe of his boot along the outline of Ren’s cock, digging the edge of his sole into the sensitive underside of the head of it. Ren is making helpless noises that drive Hux wild. Hux grips his own cock hard, to keep from going over the edge.

A sharp tug on Ren’s hair is all it takes. Ren’s entire body goes rigid, his face contorted as though he’s been stabbed. His hips twitch, and the stain on the front of his trousers spreads as he comes under Hux’s boot.

It takes only a few strokes before Hux comes too. He tries to aim for Ren’s proud, tortured face, but his hips buck and he falls back against the desk, his vision going dark and bright and dark again. When the last spasm of pleasure leaves him, Hux finds he’s spent himself mostly in Ren’s hair. There’s a thread of white on Hux’s hand, where he fisted it in Ren’s locks as he came, so Hux offers his hand to Ren, who gratefully licks it clean between rough, panting breaths.

There’s silence for a few minutes after. Only the roar of the ship’s reactors, and the soft sound of Kylo Ren’s kisses across Hux’s hand.

“Thank you, General,” Ren says at last.

Hux blinks. Looks away. “There’s no need.”

Ren rises from the floor, bends to pick up his helmet. He’s tall again, looming in his awkward way, but he makes an enticing picture with Hux’s come splattered through his black hair.

Hux regrets that Ren will have to spoil that picture, but of course he’ll want to wipe the mess away before he puts on his helmet. Hux slides open his middle desk drawer for a cleaning cloth.

Ren merely looks at the cloth in Hux’s hand, uncomprehending.

“Don’t you want to clean yourself up?” Hux offers.

“No, General.”

Ren’s throat bobs as he swallows. His mouth is still somewhat bloody and very wet.

Then Hux remembers, with a flare of frustration that might almost be called envy. “That’s right. You can use the Force to do that.”

Ren smirks. “No. General.”

Ren lifts his helmet and slides it on over his head, over his unwashed hair. Over the traces of Hux that gleam there like filthy pearls in a crown.

To keep from gasping, Hux swallows too. His jaw is tense. Ren’s going to walk around the Finalizer for the rest of his shift, talking to officers and training with his Knights and probably destroying a few vital pieces of First Order equipment, all while Hux’s come dries in his hair. 

It should sicken Hux, the depth of Ren’s depravity. It shouldn’t turn him on all over again, or make his heart speed up. It definitely shouldn’t make Hux want to take Ren’s hand again and pull it to his chest and hold it there, feeling Ren’s pulse against his heartbeat.

Hux slides a sanitising wand over his spit-covered hands, then puts his gloves back on. He makes a show of it, deliberately not looking at Ren, and when he’s finished, Ren is gone.

\- - - -

  
Hux is at work on his research when the alarm sounds at the door of his chambers. Someone wants to get in, and is trying to force an entry. Hux sighs. There’s only one person that could be.

The alarm falls silent as Ren slams the door behind him.

“I trust this is an emergency?” Hux arches his brows, not bothering to close the textbook on his datapad. It’s not an emergency. It’s only Ren, who, in himself, is an embodied crisis.

Ren shakes his head slowly. He’s unmasked, and looks chastened by Hux’s words. What, did he expect Hux to rush into his arms and swoon into his adoring kiss?

“Why. Are you in. My rooms?”

“I wanted to see you.”

Hux grits his teeth. “Ah, yes, and when you’re a prince, and a son of the decadent Republic, _and_ a wizard with the kriffing Force, you’re used to getting what you want, isn’t that right?” 

Ren smirks. He’s infuriatingly smug. There’s a hint of real pride on his face, though, too, and a kind of fondness that makes Hux drop his eyes back to his datapad.

“I’m in the middle of a project, Ren. It’s essential for my work within the Order. I can’t service your monstrous needs, not tonight.”

“Let me see,” says Ren, stalking towards Hux’s desk in his menacing, awkward way. He leans over Hux’s datapad, as though he’s actually curious, as though it wouldn’t be simpler for him to delve into Hux’s mind and wrench out any information he needs.

“It’s for the Starkiller Project. I’m teaching myself the appropriate amount of physics and engineering.”

“We have engineers for that.”

“You noticed? Since you consider yourself so far above the rest of us, I was under the impression that no other living creature’s existence even registered in your mind.”

 _Except for mine, for some reason,_ Hux doesn’t say. He hopes Ren doesn’t hear it.

Ren leans closer to the datapad, close enough for Hux to smell the fresh sweat on his skin and the scent of ozone, of burning things. He’s come from training, then, without cleaning himself. It’s been five nights since their encounter in Hux’s office. Hux wonders idly, with no small measure of disgust, whether Ren has yet taken the opportunity to wash his hair.

Ren’s shoulder nudges against Hux’s. In spite of the ship’s chill, Ren’s body heat transfers easily even through the layers of fabric separating them.

“It matters to you,” says Ren, sounding surprised. “You want to get this right. To best instruct your crew.”

“Get out of my head, Ren,” Hux says with a grimace, though Ren wasn’t in his head this time. He figured that out on his own, clever boy. Now he’ll probably want a treat.

“I never thought you cared about anything but yourself. Your reputation.”

“Of course I care about my bloody work, Ren, it’s all I’ve ever had.” Hux speaks flatly, as though this isn’t an admission of weakness ripe for exploitation.

“Tell me, then.”

Hux turns in his chair to face Ren. Ren has his face close to Hux’s, in his personal space, as usual. Hux thought it was Ren’s way at first, but over time he noticed the man doesn’t do that to other officers, unless he’s conducting an interrogation. Which, Hux supposes, this is, in a way.

“It isn’t interesting,” Hux demurs. “I mean to say, I find it interesting, but that’s only because I’m fascinated by the Empire and Imperial technology.”

“ _Tell_ me,” Ren repeats, more insistent, with an implicit threat. Why does he care so much? 

Then Ren drops to his knees next to Hux’s chair, and lowers his head until it rests in Hux’s lap. It’s clumsy, not sexy. Like Ren is an ungainly, unkempt pet seeking Hux’s attention.

“Is this what you want?” Ren’s voice is muffled where his mouth is against Hux’s thigh. He’s getting the cloth wet. Hux should pull away.

Instead, he sighs, resigned to the new direction the evening has taken. Tips Ren’s face up, strokes a finger under his chin. Ren’s eyelashes flicker over his cheeks. One corner of his obscene mouth quirks up, in an expression halfway between a wince and a smile.

“I suppose you want me to fuck your mouth,” Hux says dully.

“Not if you don’t want to,” says Ren. How charitable of him, to break Hux’s focus and then refuse to make demands. “I like this. You, talking to me.”

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe you actually want to hear my conclusions about the scientific trajectory for the Starkiller Project.”

“I’ve been absent from your meetings this week. I thought I wouldn’t care. But I missed them.”

“Isn’t that sweet.” Hux’s nose twitches. If this is a new seduction tactic, Ren’s as bad as this as he is at everything else. Everything except destruction, Ren’s sole skill.

“Will you talk to me about it?”

“You said yourself you have no need for science, so great is the power of your Force. I suspect you simply don’t understand it. You find technology too subtle, too complex.”

“I could understand.” Ren hesitates. “I studied physics in lower school on Hosnian Prime.”

“Ah, yes, your top-quality New Republic education. There’s nothing an Outer Rim savage from Arkanis could teach you, then.” 

Hux lays out his sarcasm thick enough to suffocate. He’d known Ren was born on Chandrila, and had spent his adolescence as some sort of Jedi, but of course he would have grown up in the capital, with his mother, the Rebel senator. Hux doesn’t see Organa when he looks at Ren, but he often wishes he could. It would make it easier to hate him.

“Stop being difficult, Hux. I told you what I want. You don’t have a problem hurting me. Why won’t you talk to me about what you like?”

 _Because pain is part of war_ , Hux thinks, desperately. _Because I was raised for that. Not this._

Ren’s not in his head. He won’t hear it. Hux should be happy about that.

“Fine,” says Hux. “I’ll tell you. But I want you sitting in a chair, not kneeling. I won’t have this turned into one of your perverse games.”

Ren rises, does something with his hands, and sits down on the air. He floats there, next to Hux, casting a smug eye in Hux’s direction to appreciate the flare of displeasure on the General’s face.

“It’s efficient,” says Ren in his own defence. “You like efficiency.”

Hux snorts and turns back to his datapad.

“So, Ren. What would you like to know?”

“Read to me,” Ren says, voice rough. “What you’re reading.”

So Hux reads from the textbook. It’s not as quick for him to learn when he’s reading aloud, but he has a good voice, crisp and authoritative and flawlessly Imperial in its pronunciation, and he likes to have Ren silent and listening. It feels right.

Ren, however, begins to fidget after a few minutes. He’s shifting in his seat, except he’s sitting on nothing, which is unsettling.

Hux pauses mid-sentence. “Is there something you need?”

“You said before, in that meeting, that you were sending scouts to assess kyber-rich planets.”

“Yes. The first and second Death Stars were kyber-powered. Or, rather, they were powered with hypermatter reactors. The kyber crystals were used to focus the energy produced in the reactors.”

“Like a lightsaber,” says Ren.

Hux purses his lips. “You stopped my reading to point out that the Death Stars were like lightsabers.”

Ren reaches to his belt, unclips his saber and raises it. Hux doesn’t flinch as it ignites, spitting fire, hot against his face even at a forearm’s distance. The first time he saw Ren’s saber, months ago when the knight was first stationed to the _Finalizer_ , Hux thought it couldn’t be real. Much about Kylo Ren still strikes him that way. He’s adjusting to it, though. 

“There’s a kyber crystal inside that focuses the Force user’s energy into the plasma blade,” Ren explains in his flat voice. “Mine is cracked, so my lightsaber is stronger. But it’s unstable. That’s why it has these crossguard vents.”

Hux knows this, of course. The first time he saw Ren fighting, he did enough research in the aftermath to understand the limits of Ren’s powers. It had been a relief to learn the saber, at least, was mechanical, not magical.

Ren looks good like this, his irregular features splashed in flickering red. Hux has only seen Ren in battle twice, from afar, and on a few occasions in his training rooms. Each time, Hux came away with a reluctant admiration for Ren’s elegance, his command, his grace. Then there are the times Ren has used his saber to destroy things around the ship. Hux doesn’t admire that. Not at all.

So, the admiration and frustration cancel each other out, and the result is that Hux feels nothing for Ren, which is exactly how it should be.

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist turning a private lesson into a chance to show off your favourite toy, Ren. That’s why I said this was a bad idea.”

Ren scowls and powers the lightsaber off with a loud buzzing sound. He clips it to his belt again, but keeps it in his lap, tapping his fingertips softly against the crossguard vents. He’s avoiding looking at Hux.

“I thought we were going to talk,” says Ren after a moment. “About your...work stuff. I don’t want to hear about Wilhuff Tarkin for my whole rest shift.”

“You’d rather hear my ideas than Tarkin’s?”

Hux expects Ren to twist his features and deny this accusation, but he turns to Hux and sticks out his lower lip instead, his eyes wide and enchanting. Then he nods.

Well, that’s settled then. The man is mad, and Hux is going down with him, into whatever unreasonable obsession Ren has cultivated here between them, with his New Republic ideas about loyalty and intimacy and the proper uses of one’s leisure time.

“You want kyber crystals to build a third Death Star,” Ren restates. “Tell me how you want to do it.”

“All right, well. The idea at present is to convert an existing planet into a weapon. I wouldn’t have thought it could be done — it seems too simple, too obvious — but everything from the engineering division suggests it’s the best way to proceed.”

“Ilum,” says Ren.

“Come again?”

“The planet. It must be Ilum. I’ve been having visions in the Force.” Ren’s cheeks colour at the mention of his visions. He shakes his head to clear it, and pushes on. “The Jedi Order once sent their younglings there to gather crystals for their sabers. Turning the sacred planet into a weapon will show the Galaxy that the Jedi are extinct for all time.”

“Did your Force show you this about the Jedi younglings?”

“It’s common knowledge. Like how everyone knows the Sith were the first to conceive of a weapon that could destroy a planet, thousands of standard years ago.”

“Common knowledge among the Jedi, perhaps. Not among civilised groups.”

Ren’s temper flares like his lightsaber igniting. _Unstable_. Hux knew it all along, and now Ren has said it himself. 

“I’m not a Jedi,” Ren growls, scrambling to his feet. The empty air under him shifts like a breeze. “The Supreme Leader could have you executed for saying that.”

Hux gets to his feet as well, locking the screen of his datapad and facing Ren’s rage with his shoulders back and his spine straight. He’s not scared, but whatever game Ren’s playing, coming into his quarters at night and asking for hours of his time, then flying into a rage — this has to stop.

“You’re not a Jedi, no,” says Hux slowly. “You’re a nuisance. And — and an enigma.”

“An enigma?” There’s confusion on Ren’s face now, along with his wrath, which, Hux understands, isn’t really directed at him at all, but at one or more of the old faces he saw in his office five days ago when Ren pulled him into his head, into the bright roaring vision that must play at all times in there.

“You contradict yourself.” Hux is falling over an edge, his own mind rubbed raw by the memory of Ren’s. He can’t keep the words back, whatever their consequence. “Your every action cancels out the very thing you’ve previously done. You use your Force to create impossible order out of chaos, then you destroy my ship’s sophisticated instruments with your next breath. You clean up my spilled tea, then you harass me on the bridge like I’m nothing to you. You ask for my words and my opinions, then you ignore them to put forth your own. You charm me, Ren, and then you piss me off. Surely you can understand why I’d rather not give you my time.”

There’s silence. Ren still glowers, the warmth of the Force sparking off him, his gloved hands clenched.

Hux moistens his mouth. His ill-advised little speech has left it dry.

He expects Ren to turn and stalk out of the room, or to ignite his lightsaber and plow the plasma blade through Hux’s chest. There’s a terrifying second in which Hux thinks the worst thing of all may happen: Ren closing the gap between their faces and kissing him on the mouth for the first time.

Instead, Ren draws closer to Hux, looming over him, or trying to. Hux is standing up very straight and tall, and will not be cowed by an insolent magician, however berserk Ren may become in his bloodlust.

“I’ll give you what you want, Hux,” says Kylo Ren in a quiet voice. “I’ll prove to you that I’m what you think I am. A brute. A monster.”

“At last. Some consistency in your behaviour.”

Ren’s enormous hands take hold of either side of Hux’s hips. He slides them up to Hux’s narrow waist, to his belt with its buckle of brushed steel.

“I’m going to ruin you, Hux.” Ren sounds almost tender. “All the order in your world will be only a memory. My chaos will be all that’s left, General. I’m going to take you apart.”

  
\- - - -

  
They don’t make it to the bed. Ren takes off Hux’s uniform down to his blasterproof vest, but he can’t figure out the side fasteners, even with the Force, so he throws Hux down on the carpet in front of his ice-blue sofa, and growls in Hux’s ear as Hux works the hook-and-loop panels apart and wiggles the vest over his head. Ren rips Hux’s undershirt down the front, holding him down with all his weight across Hux’s middle.

Hux struggles to breathe. This is what sex with Ren is always like: the rage breaking into lust, into a desire to devour the other man whole. Hux doesn’t like pain, not from Ren, but views it as a toll he must pay for his unwise attraction.

Ren is saying something. The roar of Hux’s own blood in his ears makes it hard to hear him. Ren’s teeth are bared, his eyes glassy, his big hands spread on Hux’s chest, crushing him.

“I ruin everything. Isn’t that what you said, Hux? You’re thinking it all the time, so loud. Now you’re right here for me to ruin, and I’m stronger than you.”

It’s not sexy, what Ren’s saying, and it’s not scary, either. Hux has had a lifetime to desensitise himself to threats from violent men. But the weight of Ren’s body on his still goes to Hux’s cock, until he’s hard in spite of himself.

“I’m going to ruin you, like everything else,” Ren’s saying now, his voice hollow and threaded with rage. “Unless you were wrong about me. But you weren’t, Hux, you were right, always right. You always know best. You know me best.” Ren’s mouth twists, cruel and mocking, even as his lip trembles.

This sends a chill through Hux. He tries to push Ren away, but there’s no air in his lungs and he’s weak, his head is spinning. He snarls into Ren’s face instead, unable to speak.

Ren leans close, his breath hot on Hux’s ear and his sensitive neck. “I’m going to make a mess of you, General. Take what I want. Make you my perfect First Order whore, to fuck whenever I want you. Your glorious plans, destroyed. I’m going to break you until all you can do is beg for my dick. You’ll weep when it’s stretching you open inside.”

Hux hears these crude words dimly through the horror that rises in him as he realises Ren is pinning him down with the Force. If it were only their bodies together, only Ren’s superior strength against Hux’s superior discipline, he wouldn’t be afraid. But this is magic, this is irrational, this is the terrain of an alien planet where Hux cannot breathe the air, and so he sends his thoughts out like a signal flare: _Enough, Ren. You’ve proven your point._

“Have I, General? I’m corrupting you. I defile everything I touch, Hux. So why do you let me touch you?”

 _Let me go._ Hux thinks it with all the hatred he can muster, and the crushing Force on his chest lets up, vanishes, as though it was never there. Hux breathes again, long, hungry breaths. There’s no more of Ren’s magic on his skin, deep enough to drown in. There’s only Ren, his sweat-damp hair tumbling over Hux’s face. It shields their faces from the dim light of the room like a curtain.

Ren’s face is close to Hux’s. He’s looking at Hux with uncertainty gleaming in his eyes, like he’s wondering if he went too far. Does he think Hux is that easily broken? Hux is already calm again, a steely calm somewhere between frustration and desire. His cock is still hard, trapped against Ren’s thigh, but it’s a distant feeling when Ren’s face is right there, when Ren is gazing at Hux with careful concern in his eyes.

When Ren exhales, his big nose brushes against Hux’s smaller one. Ren’s breath doesn’t smell bad. It smells like herbs, like something to use in a ritual.

Hux lifts his head, then — without thinking about what he’s doing — until his mouth is on Ren’s, gentle, chaste, a long soft press of their soft lips.

It’s what Hux needed, without knowing he needed it like he needs water. Someone moans. It’s probably Hux, because Hux can’t recall the last time anything happened to him that felt this good. He could kiss Ren forever and never want to stop, and that’s far more terrifying than anything Ren could do to him with the Force, but Hux doesn’t care — he opens for Ren, putting out his tongue to brush Ren’s lips, sucking gently at the lower one until Ren, too, moans into his mouth. Hux’s lower belly is so full of hot pleasure that he can’t keep from pressing himself against Ren, and the pressure of Ren’s hips on his is softer and sweeter and more divine than even Ren’s submission.

“Hux.” Ren kisses the side of his mouth, messy and too tender. “Hux, you, I’m. I think I’m—” 

Hux doesn’t want to hear what Ren has to say, because his words are not going to be violent this time. Ren has spent his threats and his rage, and all that’s left underneath are the real risks, the only true dangers left to men raised for war. So Hux kisses him again, deep and searching and hot, so hot. Ren’s mouth tastes the same as his breath. Like a ritual.

Hux arches his back, pushing more of himself against Ren. He’s mindless, but Ren is too, moaning into Hux’s jaw, kissing Hux’s neck like it’s precious, like Hux is a precious thing. “Please,” Hux breathes, and he’s not sure if he’s begging for mercy or begging to be hurt again. The latter is what he’s used to. It’s what makes sense. Not this gentleness that makes him burn and thrill and fall apart.

“Please, Ren, please...” Hux’s hands are on Ren’s chest, unfastening his tunic, and Ren is pulling down Hux’s jodhpurs and briefs, pulling Hux’s boots off with the Force, but the touch of the Force on his body doesn’t scare Hux anymore, not this time — this time it makes him want to laugh. He pushes his face into Ren’s neck and smells sweat and oil and the stale traces of Ren’s lightsaber burning the air.

Ren is saying Hux’s name over and over as he kissing down Hux’s body. It’s like what he was doing to Hux with the Force on the bridge, but so much better, because Ren is here, and he smells like _Ren_ , and he’s touching Hux, he’s touching him, he wants him. He’s kissing Hux’s ribs, dragging his teeth playfully along the soft curve of Hux’s belly. Stroking Hux everywhere with his big hands. Ren has taken off his gloves somewhere in their frenzy, and his hands are rough and warm and good. 

Ren looks up at Hux, his mouth hovering over Hux’s cock. A question in his eyes. Hux almost smiles — he can’t remember the last time he smiled; it was probably on the bridge when Adasa told him the _Interamnia_ had obliterated those Rebel targets — and shakes his head. Weaves his fingers into Ren’s hair and hauls him up to his mouth for another kiss. 

“Not that now,” he whispers into Ren’s lips. “Inside me. Be gentle.”

There’s lube in the drawer of Hux’s desk, and Ren pulls the thought out of his head as he pulls the bottle across the room with the Force. He shrugs out of his tunic and pulls his shirt off over his head, one-handed. Hux is struck, as always, by the beauty of Ren’s body. The smooth skin flecked with dark moles, like droplets of spilled tea.

Ren slides out of his leggings, too, and the head of his enormous cock bounces against Hux’s thigh when he leans over Hux once more, kissing Hux’s collarbones as he slicks himself. 

Ren drags Hux’s hips up, hands wrapped around his thighs, but when Ren’s hands move to the cleft of Hux’s buttocks, his hips remain elevated, propped up on a cushion of air. _Kriff_ , Ren’s using his ridiculous Dark Side powers to get a better angle to fuck Hux’s arse. Hux tries not to laugh, but Ren hears his thoughts and looks at Hux with a crooked smile that shows his teeth. Then they’re both laughing, choking on the silliness of _Kylo Ren with General Hux_ , until Ren’s slick fingers find Hux’s entrance and Hux’s laugh turns into a cry of pleasure. 

When Ren’s first finger breaches him, Hux snaps his hips and drags his hands over his own chest, trying to ground himself. It feels too good. Before, it’s always been painful, rough, quick, but now Ren is taking his time stretching Hux open. He adds a second finger, brushes Hux’s prostate, and Hux throws his head back and screams a short, quick cry of delighted astonishment, like this is the first time he’s felt such pleasure. As Ren’s fingers work their way into him, Hux drapes his arms around Ren’s neck, cards his hands through Ren’s hair, tangling the crusted strands and not even caring that it’s been far too long since Ren was properly clean. Hux isn’t clean either, anymore, maybe never was. But this doesn’t feel like defilement. It feels like surrender.

Ren is teasing his hole so gently, giving Hux what he needs like he deserves it, like the General has shot every planet out of space just for Ren. Ren’s fingers are thick enough that a third one will ache, but he’s being careful, so careful with Hux. He’s moving slowly, fingertips flickering across Hux’s prostate until Hux thinks he might start crying from the pleasure and the overwhelm, the way Ren cries when Hux slaps him.

Hux understands now, understands at last what Ren has tried to tell him all along, as though the crucial information was transferred through their first kiss. This has been Hux’s to ask for, all along, this wild gentleness, this devotion from Ren, and it’s _impossible_ , it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to Hux, because Hux isn’t capable of love, because he didn’t even think he was capable of lust until Ren boarded his ship and looked at him with those liquid eyes, because Ren is only twenty-five, his brain hasn’t even finished developing, he’s broken, he’s unstable, and Hux doesn’t have time for kindness, and he and Ren are so wrong for this, they’re two soldiers at the highest ranks of an autocratic military dictatorship at the perpetual edge of war, and it won’t last, it won’t last, it won’t... 

“Ren, you — in me, now. Please, I’m close, I’m...”

“Hux, oh, you’re good, you’re perfect, you’re fucking _perfect_ , I won’t — _fuck_ — I won’t hurt you.” Ren’s voice breaks, but he’s inside Hux, slowly pushing into him, and at the first brush of Ren against his prostate — or maybe it’s the words of praise — Hux is coming, his vision flashing clean bright white. 

When Hux comes, Ren is inside him but around him, too, a presence in the Force, which Hux can feel all of a sudden because Ren is in his head, and it feels good. Ren is hesitant, cautious, pushing into Hux again and again with quick messy strokes, wanting to be told what to do, and then Ren comes too, at the sight of Hux undone below him, which Hux can see through Ren’s eyes. Hux’s pleasure crests again, less like an orgasm than a full-body vision of everything it’s possible for Ren to give him, if he asks. Braced against Ren’s chest, Hux bites his lip, screams through his teeth, oversensitive and helpless and ready for all of this, so ready. Then everything goes dark. 

When his awareness returns, Hux is in his bed, still undressed. The duvet has been pulled up to cover him. Ren is there beside him, with his hair tucked behind his big ears and unexpected concern on his face.

“The Force,” says Ren, because what else does Ren ever talk about? “You lost consciousness.”

“That wasn’t the Force, you kriffing virgin,” says Hux breathlessly, though Ren wasn’t a virgin even before the first time they did this. Then again, they’ve never done this like _that_ before. 

“I felt you communing with me.” Ren puts his palm on the back of his neck, hunching his shoulders, awkward and too big in every way. “You were in my head. Then you blacked out.”

“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” Hux sighs. “That wasn’t mysticism, Ren. It was an orgasm. An uncommonly good one.”

Hux still feels good, in fact, in spite of passing out. No pain in his head, still normal sensation in all his fingers and his toes. The wonderful lassitude after sex is pouring up from his belly and into all his limbs. He feels so good, in fact, that he ignores all his programming, all his protocol, and scoots closer to Ren. Hux rests his forehead against Ren’s chest. Hears the noise of astonishment that escapes Ren’s lips before Ren has time to disguise it.

“Don’t get ideas,” Hux warns, even as Ren’s hands come down on his head, smoothing his sex-wrecked hair back into place. Ren slides down under the covers, where Hux is, to kiss him.

As they kiss, as Ren’s wide hands restore the neatness to Hux’s hairstyle, Hux’s breathing evens out. He’s falling asleep.

His last thought before sleep is a comforting one. Whatever just happened with Ren, this can’t be love, Hux realises. Because love is chaotic. Love means losing control, breaking open for someone else’s searching heart. But that’s not what this is. Kylo Ren couldn’t break Hux if he tried. Instead, with his hands in Hux’s hair and his remarkable kisses, Ren is putting Hux back together again.

  
\- - - -

  
“Lights to five percent,” says Kylo as quietly as he can, so as not to wake Hux. But he says it _too_ quietly, and nothing happens. So instead, Kylo waves his hand and dims the lights with the Force. 

Next to him, Hux is dreaming.

Kylo can hear his dream, like it’s a holo playing on a projector in the room. At first Kylo thinks it’s another one of the dreams he’s heard before, the foolish dreams Hux has where time flows backwards and all things restore themselves to the lifeless order that existed at the moment of the universe’s birth. Hux is obsessed with this concept, at least since he started his Tarkin Initiative research, but Kylo finds the whole idea tiresome. Time carries the Galaxy forward. There’s nothing behind Kylo, nothing he’d ever want to go back to. The past is meant to be forgotten.

This dream, though, is different from the rest. It has the same look to it — the dark voids of the Galaxy, white stars strung out in filaments jewelled with scattered planets. Other galaxies visible in the distance, pale and whirling, inaccessible to Hux even in his dreams. But in this dream, the universe isn’t contracting back to its orderly point of origin. It’s maintaining its complexity. It’s full of movement, of change. Things are alive here. A starship slides past, silent in the vacuum, and in the dream Hux knows its parts are mismatched, its mechanisms worn and close to breaking, but that doesn’t matter to him here in his sleeping mind. There are people on the starship, people from several far-flung species, and some of them laugh together as they play a game around a table. In another chamber on the ship, two humans embrace in low light. The starship moves on, and Hux’s dreaming mind forgets it. He glimpses a star system across the Galaxy. Five planets slowly circle a pale sun. They’re disorderly places, rife with treachery and rebellion, but in his dream, Hux doesn’t worry about that. He takes in the green surface of the largest planet, draped with white clouds. It’s small, and perfect, and far away. Hux admires its beauty for a long moment of somnolent calm. Then his mind drags itself out into the starless black, and the dream drifts away, shorts out like a dying bulb, and Hux’s sleep is deep and dark and hidden once again.

Kylo blinks in the dark, listening to the sound of the _Finalizer_ ’s engines. He thinks about Hux, and Hux’s dream. 

It’s still a vision of order, in a way. Not of the glorious past, but of the present — tense, imperfect. Everything balanced on an edge between surviving and coming apart. The dream showed the Galaxy in its truth, in its order and its chaos. Hux was dreaming of a Galaxy where disorder was a neutral element of space, instead of a looming, ceaseless, unendurable threat.

It was a dream of internal order, in a way. In the dream, Hux didn’t need to remake the whole Galaxy or bring it under his control, because he’d slipped into a simpler state of mind, one that could allow for imperfection.

Kylo’s own mind doesn’t work that way, even in dreams. In his dreams, he falls short. He fails. He’s punished. He gets what he deserves. Kylo dreams about people — people he’s known, or faceless archetypes enacting ancient roles. Victory, defeat, drama, violence. His dreams are loud and they explode in his mind in full colour. He’s never dreamed about the Galaxy the way Hux does, not even a glimpse of a cloudy little planet floating in the black, flecked with the silent lights of its civilisations.

Kylo thinks about the universe, and about Hux.

There’s no point to what Hux is doing with his life, fighting in the name of order. His ideals are a comforting illusion. Hux spends his days chasing a ghost of a better galaxy. Chaos will always win in the end. No kisses can change that, no comforting dreams. The universe is made to rush apart, to break itself down until nothing is whole. Just as every relationship in Kylo Ren’s life will always end with abandonment, or rejection, or his own rage, or someone standing over him with a weapon drawn to dispatch him while he sleeps. 

Hux is the one asleep tonight, though, and he’s warm in Kylo’s arms. Kylo uses the Force to lift his body and roll him over, so Hux faces him. His breath is gentle against Kylo’s chest.

Kylo slides down in Hux’s bed, under the thick duvet. Hux must be cold all the time, to hide under that greatcoat during the day and this bedding at night. That must be why he lives on hot tarine tea. He’d be warmer if he ate actual food, Kylo decides, thinking of his own generous training rations, and then he kisses Hux’s forehead where a sweep of his hair has slipped free of the pomade.

Hux makes a small sleeping noise, and burrows closer to Kylo’s chest. Kylo holds him there, stroking Hux’s back. His skin is soft, tender and unscarred and impossibly pure. Kylo would like to crush Hux against his chest, hug him so tightly that he’d wake up and shower Kylo in scandalised protests, but instead Kylo clings to Hux gently, and lets Hux relax against him. He presses their foreheads and their noses together, but doesn’t dip again into Hux’s dreaming mind.

Eventually, Kylo falls asleep, and dreams of Hux. 

**Author's Note:**

> The dubcon warning is for a scene of workplace sexual harassment involving use of the Force — Hux can make it stop when he wants, but there’s no prior negotiation or discussion, and the power dynamics are shady.
> 
> Credit goes to [vadianna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vadianna/pseuds/Vadianna) for the "kylo ren is dirty and smells bad" tag. He is, and he does.
> 
> Find me on my (brand-new) Twitter at [sternfleck](http://twitter.com/sternfleck).


End file.
